Installation view at Goat Moth, Godsbaden, Denmark, 2018
Alice Wilson works with construction timber, plaster, photography and paint, as well as often improvising with materials to realise ideas. Landscape is used in Wilson’s practice as a medium through which to discuss concerns with experience, access and expectation.
The work’s interrogation of how we negotiate landscape functions as an allegory of our relationship to educational, political and social structures.
A recurring method in Wilson’s practice are the Barrier System Paintings which in some ways are formalisations of the by products of the sculpting process, developed with material left over from large scale sculptures; colour tests, off-cuts and imagery. Wilson has pulled these pieces back together into (for her) the most tangible and formal art object -the painting.
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From functional objects to towering abstract constructions, Wilson moves between concept driven ideas to developing opportunities to make responsively to a site and situation. Her work attempts to acknowledge it’s situation and surroundings through form and sometimes also function.
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Alice received her MA in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of art (2011).
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Selected Solo Exhibitions
Island, JGM Gallery, London (2019)
Gated Community, Glass Cloud Gallery, London (2019)
Goat Moth, Godsbaden, Denmark (2018)
Alice Wilson, DOLPH, London (2017)
Cheap Laughs, The Pump House Gallery, London (2017)
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Selected Group Exhibitions
Backyard Sculpture, Domobaal, London (2019)
Immaculate Dream, Collyer Bristow Gallery, (2019)
Harder Edge, Saatchi Gallery, London (2019)
Painting and Other Bad Habits, Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Denmark (2018)
Shortlisted John Moores Painting Prize (2018)
Do Re Me So Fa La Te, The Griffin Gallery, London (2018)
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My two week residency at Hogchester arts was started with a welcome stroll around the farm with Chantal and dog Piper to meet the goats, chickens and ‘Hogzilla’ a big pig notorious for her randy behaviour. it is nice to remember the pleasure and excitement I felt
finding myself in this new landscape (I’d never been to the Dorset coast before) and exploring the location that myself and fellow artist Jane (yet to arrive) were going to inhabit for the coming fortnight.
Jane arrived that evening, having achieved the substantial feat of finding the turning to Hogchester in the wind, rain and darkness and then the three of us shared our first meal together, created from ‘The Green Roasting Tin’ (a very handy cookbook!)
We’d had a few postponements to the residency due to the pandemic, and so I think the planning for how I would use the time had shifted a bit. I had ambitions of reading and finding out new things, but on the first day I was just really eager to buy an ordnance survey map and start exploring. I do a lot of walking, mainly in Scotland where I know the terrain very well. I have slowly acknowledged to myself that I’m pretty rubbish at reading maps which kind of parallels me finally accepting that I’m afraid of heights. This learning process has happened from getting very lost on my own and repeatedly finding myself at the top of high tourist attractions having panic attacks, so to be in a terrain where you keep the sea on the right and the land on the left felt like a sensible place to start. Other than a very hairy moment walking between cliff edge and a bunch of cows I had a great walk from Charmouth to Seatown and back on my first day.
I ended up spending most of my time walking, mainly alone but most memorably with Jane, walking along the ‘Undercliff’ which was the most amazing kind of space, it felt like we kept coming across new rooms created by the constantly changing shrubbery, trees and rocks that were holding the land together at this bit of coast, I’ve never been on a walk where my sense of scale shifted so much throughout.
The other ‘ing I did a lot of was talking which I feel so lucky about. To be sharing a space with Jane in the lovely farm cottage was a privilege, to enjoy extended conversations day after day trying to make sense of what we were both up to but also just talking, to have that time and to make a new friend and to get to know their practice was so unique and special. I really look forward to continuing those conversations with Jane and Chantal.
Hogchester Arts founder Chantal has created such a special and generous space for artists, it has already started so many conversations the ripples of which are long lasting.
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